Chicago: Tests show boy not missing child

The boy abandoned at a suburban Chicago hospital is not the one who vanished in North Carolina 2 1/2 years ago, the FBI said Friday after DNA tests solved a mystery that had gripped two states for days.

FBI agent Thomas Kneir said tests proved that the boy called Eli Quick is not Tristen “Buddy” Myers, who disappeared while walking two dogs in Roseboro, N.C., in October 2000.

The news left Myers’ family bitterly disappointed and it did not resolve the question of who the Chicago boy is, where he came from and what his future holds. The boy is in foster care.

The investigation began after a man took the boy to a hospital in Evanston in February to be evaluated for aggressive behavior. The man, Ricky Quick, said Friday he would fight for custody.

California: Unabomber’s cabin spared from demolition

The cabin where Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski constructed his deadly bombs has been spared from demolition.

Kaczynski transferred ownership of the cabin to an investigator on his defense team, who had planned to dismantle it Thursday then decided not to. There was no immediate explanation why.

The cabin was moved from Montana to Sacramento for Kaczynski’s federal trial, and has since been housed at the former Mather Air Force Base in Rancho Cordova.

FBI agents arrested Kaczynski at the cabin in April 1996 for a string of mail-bomb attacks that killed three people and injured 23 from 1978 to 1995.

Kaczynski’s trial ended with a plea agreement under which he accepted a prison sentence of four life terms plus 30 years rather than risk the death penalty. He is in a federal prison in Colorado.

Virginia: Jefferson-Hemings saga takes Internet spy twist

The wife of a Thomas Jefferson family association official said Friday that she masqueraded as a 67-year-old black woman on an Internet chat room in a bid to keep descendants of a reputed Jefferson mistress out of this weekend’s family reunion.

“It might have been somewhat unethical,” said Paulie Abeles of Washington, D.C., who participated for eight months in the Yahoo! message board created for relatives of Jefferson slave Sally Hemings.

“It might have been childish, but I really think I was working in the best interest of the majority of the family members to make the reunion a calm and civilized gathering,” she said.

But members of both families said they were upset with Abeles’ admission on the eve of the reunion at Jefferson’s estate in Charlottesville.

The Hemings clan was formally excluded from membership last year, but some members of the association continue to invite slave descendants to accompany them to the annual cocktail party and cemetery visit.